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© 2026 CompareLLM. Public benchmark data aggregated from Arena Elo, LiveBench, SWE-bench & OpenRouter.

Every score has a dated snapshot.

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  3. Claude Sonnet 5 vs Mistral: Codestral 2508

Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026noindex (thin pair)

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Mistral: Codestral 2508 benchmark

In this head-to-head showdown, Mistral: Codestral 2508 is more budget-friendly at $0.9/1M per 1M output tokens. Review the complete breakdown below to determine which model best fits your performance and budget requirements.

Executive Comparison Verdict

Bottom Line: Choose Claude Sonnet 5 if your priority is peak reasoning, complex code generation, and top preference Elo. Choose Mistral: Codestral 2508 if you are optimizing for low latency, high throughput, and cost-efficient API deployment.
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Verified Head-to-Head Advantage Breakdown

3 direct benchmark disciplines evaluated across capability, speed, and cost

Claude Sonnet 5 (1)Mistral: Codestral 2508 (2)
Claude Sonnet 5
1 of 3 Wins
✓Context window
Mistral: Codestral 2508
2 of 3 Wins
✓Input price✓Output price
Anthropic
Leads 1 of 3 metrics
Claude Sonnet 5

Anthropic workhorse. Official $2/$10 per 1M tokens made permanent on Aug 10 2026.

Sonnet 5Elo 1,556$10/1M out
Mistral
Leads 2 of 3 metrics
Mistral: Codestral 2508

Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (mistralai/codestral-2508). Preview until a second source matches.

$0.8999999999999999/1M out

Claude 5 Series Lineage & Sibling Variants

3 models

Currently comparing Claude Sonnet 5 vs Mistral: Codestral 2508. Alternative family tiers available.

Active: Claude Sonnet 5
Claude Opus 5$50Claude Fable 5$50
Top Rival Showdowns for Claude Sonnet 5
All Matchups
Compare vs:vs GPT-5vs Gemini 3 Provs Grok 4.6vs DeepSeek V4 Provs Qwen 3 Max
Preference Leader

No shared data

Single model data

Throughput Leader

No shared data

No latency data

Value per Dollar LeaderMistral: Codestral 2508 Wins

Mistral: Codestral 2508

$0.8999999999999999 / 1M output

Capability Percentiles

Relative percentile scores computed across all active models in the benchmark catalog.

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

Leaders Matchup Capability Radar

Comparing top Western standard models with China's leading frontier rival across 6 skill dimensions. Tap any spoke or dot to inspect.

Tap any node to inspect
0–100 %ile
Head-to-Head Comparison

Overall Matchup Breakdown

Category wins across reasoning intelligence, generation speed, and token cost.

Claude Sonnet 5 (8)vsMistral: Codestral 2508 (2)
Claude Sonnet 5: 8W (80%)Overall: Claude Sonnet 5Mistral: Codestral 2508: 2W (20%)
← Claude Sonnet 5Mistral: Codestral 2508 →
🏆Claude Sonnet 5(5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Benchmark
Claude Sonnet 5vsMistral: Codestral 2508
Preference Elo
1,556vs—
Coding Elo
1,562vs—
SWE-bench
73.8%vs—
LiveBench
70.4%vs—
GPQA Diamond
82.8%vs—
Claude Sonnet 5: 5WMistral: Codestral 2508: 0W
🏆Claude Sonnet 5(2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Benchmark
Claude Sonnet 5vsMistral: Codestral 2508
Output speed
118 tok/svs—
Time to first token
175 msvs—
Claude Sonnet 5: 2WMistral: Codestral 2508: 0W
🏆Mistral: Codestral 2508(2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Benchmark
Claude Sonnet 5vsMistral: Codestral 2508
Output price
$10/1Mvs$0.9/1M+$9.1/1M
Input price
$2/1Mvs$0.3/1M+$1.7/1M
Context window
1Mvs256k+744k
Claude Sonnet 5: 1WMistral: Codestral 2508: 2W

Side-by-Side Benchmark Matrix

Preference Elo
Claude Sonnet 51,556
lmarena · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
Coding Elo
Claude Sonnet 51,562
lmarena · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
LiveBench
Claude Sonnet 570.4%
livebench · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
SWE-bench
Claude Sonnet 573.8%
swebench · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
GPQA Diamond
Claude Sonnet 582.8%
seed-bootstrap · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
Time to first token
Claude Sonnet 5175 ms
seed-bootstrap · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
Output speed
Claude Sonnet 5118 tok/s
seed-bootstrap · Aug 16, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508—
Input price+$1.7/1M
Claude Sonnet 5$2/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508$0.3/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
Output price+$9.1/1M
Claude Sonnet 5$10/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508$0.9/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
Context window+744k
Claude Sonnet 51M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
Mistral: Codestral 2508256k
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Mistral: Codestral 2508Advantage Delta
Preference Elo
1,556
lmarena · Aug 16, 2026
——
Coding Elo
1,562
lmarena · Aug 16, 2026
——
LiveBench
70.4%
livebench · Aug 16, 2026
——
SWE-bench
73.8%
swebench · Aug 16, 2026
——
GPQA Diamond
82.8%
seed-bootstrap · Aug 16, 2026
——
Time to first token
175 ms
seed-bootstrap · Aug 16, 2026
——
Output speed
118 tok/s
seed-bootstrap · Aug 16, 2026
——
Input price
$2/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
$0.3/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
+$1.7/1M
Output price
$10/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
$0.9/1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
+$9.1/1M
Context window
1M
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
256k
openrouter · Aug 17, 2026
+744k
Interactive Simulator (USD)

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Simulate monthly production API costs in USD (US Dollar).

Save up to 89% with Mistral: Codestral 2508
Monthly Volume50M tokens/mo
Quick Presets:
Token Ratio (In vs Out)70% In / 30% Out
RAG / Search (10% out)Coding / Chat (50% out)
Claude Sonnet 5$220.00 / mo
In: $70Out: $150
Mistral: Codestral 2508$24.00 / mo
In: $10.5Out: $13.5
Estimated Cost Delta

Mistral: Codestral 2508 is estimated to save $196.00/month ($2,352/year).

Based on 50M tokens (30% gen)

Key Selection Recommendations

  • 1
    Mistral: Codestral 2508:Pick Mistral: Codestral 2508 when you are optimizing output cost.
  • 2
    Claude Sonnet 5:Pick Claude Sonnet 5 for million-token RAG or long-document jobs.

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsinsufficient data

Need SWE-bench on both sides.

High-volume chatMistral: Codestral 2508

Lower output list price ($0.9/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIinsufficient data

Need TTFT on both sides.

Long-document RAGClaude Sonnet 5

Larger window (1M).

Screenshots / visionClaude Sonnet 5

Claude Sonnet 5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target WorkloadRecommended PickEvaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agentsinsufficient dataNeed SWE-bench on both sides.
High-volume chatMistral: Codestral 2508Lower output list price ($0.9/1M).
Voice / low-latency UIinsufficient dataNeed TTFT on both sides.
Long-document RAGClaude Sonnet 5Larger window (1M).
Screenshots / visionClaude Sonnet 5Claude Sonnet 5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Related Editorial Dispatches & Benchmark Notes

View all news
compareAug 10, 2026

Sonnet vs Opus in 2026: same family, different invoice

Usually Sonnet 5 vs Opus 5. Coding delta versus output $/1M. The workhorse question.

priceAug 10, 2026

Claude Sonnet 5 at $2/$10: the 2026 Anthropic workhorse

Aug 10 2026 made the $2/$10 list permanent. Sonnet is the default Claude unless the repo is actually on fire.

launchFeb 18, 2026

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the previous workhorse — still a valid vs baseline

Most of Opus 4.5 coding at a mid-tier price. Sonnet 5 replaced it as the buy; 4.5 remains a compare baseline.

Community Sentiment

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CompareLLM AI Matrix

Verified Head-to-Head Telemetry

LIVE BENCHMARK
VS
Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 5

Elo 1,556
SWE-bench73.8%
Speed (tok/s)118 tok/s
Input / 1M Tokens$2/1M
Output / 1M Tokens$10/1M
Mistral

Mistral: Codestral 2508

Elo n/a
SWE-bench—
Speed (tok/s)256k
Input / 1M Tokens$0.3/1M
Output / 1M Tokens$0.9/1M

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Mistral: Codestral 2508?
We do not have preference Elo for both models, so we do not declare an overall winner. Compare the metrics that exist.
Which is better at coding, Claude Sonnet 5 or Mistral: Codestral 2508?
SWE-bench is missing for at least one model, so we do not rank coding from a single number.
Which is cheaper to run in production?
Mistral: Codestral 2508 output tokens are $0.9/1M versus $10/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.
Which is faster, Claude Sonnet 5 or Mistral: Codestral 2508?
We do not have TTFT for both models.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Sonnet 5 accepts 1M tokens versus 256k.
Can I self-host either model?
Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.
Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?
No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.
What does preference Elo mean on this page?
Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Claude Sonnet 5 and Mistral: Codestral 2508 Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Related news

  • compare · Aug 10, 2026

    Sonnet vs Opus in 2026: same family, different invoice

  • price · Aug 10, 2026

    Claude Sonnet 5 at $2/$10: the 2026 Anthropic workhorse

  • launch · Feb 18, 2026

    Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the previous workhorse — still a valid vs baseline

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

All Claude Sonnet 5 matchups →|All Mistral: Codestral 2508 matchups →
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 (previous sonnet)Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Sonnet 5Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5